Biden awards Lincoln Police Officer Tu Anh Tran the Medal of Valor

LINCOLN — President Joe Biden awarded a Medal of Valor on Friday to the Lincoln Police Department sergeant who jumped into a frigid pond in February 2023 to save a woman from drowning in her car.

Sgt. Tu Anh Tran responded to a winter weather-related wreck at Wilderness Ridge Golf Course in which a 27-year-old woman lost control of her Hyundai Elantra on Yankee Hill Road in south Lincoln and slipped into a pond that typically does little more than complicate life for golfers.

Tran was in a store about two miles away when he responded to the 911 call as the closest officer on a 22-degree day, the Lincoln Journal Star reported at the time. He sped to the scene, shed his bullet-proof vest and utility belt and jumped in.

He swam toward the woman’s car, where she had moved into the back seat as the vehicle sank. But the pond water had filled in above where Tran could see in. He opened the back door and reached inside, felt her legs and pulled. She grabbed back.

The woman reached out for him and got out as the car sunk beneath the surface. He swam her toward the shore, tugging her shirt. Bystanders helped pull the woman and Tran from the pond, the newspaper reported. 

Tran has deflected attempts to describe his efforts as heroic, sharing credit with the bystanders and the people who called 911. But it was the second time he had jumped into the water to help rescue someone, having done the same in September 2022.

He has already been awarded the Carnegie Medal. Tran was a guest in March of U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts at Biden’s State of the Union address. He attended with his wife. Ricketts at the time credited officers like Tran for thinking of others.

On Friday in Washington, D.C., Tran was honored along with officers from Nashville, Tennessee, who stopped a school shooter, a New York fire lieutenant who saved a mother and child and a firefighter who saved two unconscious people.

The Medal of Valor is the nation’s highest award for a public safety officer. The recipients are recommended by the U.S. attorney general and reviewed by a committee appointed by the president and Senate and House leaders of both political parties.